Part 33 (1/2)
He laughed harshly as he went on: ”Well, that's partly why we're going to set our mark on this canon, if it's only to make it clear that we're not quite played out yet. You'll ram that hole full of your strongest powder, Derrick.”
Nasmyth turned and waved his hand to a man at the foot of the gully.
”Bring me down the magazine!” he ordered. ”We're going to split that rock before supper.”
The man, who disappeared, came back again with an iron box, and for the next few minutes Nasmyth, who scrambled about the rocks above the fall, taking a coil of thin wire with him, was busy. When he rejoined his companions, he led them a little further down the canon until he pointed to a shelf of rock from which they had a clear view of the fall. A handful of men had clambered down the gully, and now they stood in a cl.u.s.ter upon the strip of s.h.i.+ngle. Nasmyth indicated them with a wave of his hand before he held a little wooden box with bra.s.s pegs projecting from it up to Laura.
”It's the first big charge we have fired, and they seem to feel it's something of an event,” he said. ”In one way, it's a declaration of war we're making, and there is a good deal against us. You fit this plug into the socket when you're ready.”
”You mean me to fire the charge?” inquired Laura.
”Yes,” answered Nasmyth quietly. ”It's fitting that you should be the one to set us at our work. If it hadn't been for you, I should certainly not have taken this thing up, and now I want to feel that you are anxious for our success.”
A faint flush of colour crept into Laura Waynefleet's face. For one thing, Nasmyth's marriage to the dark-eyed girl whom Gordon had described to her depended on the success of this venture, and that was a fact which had its effect on her. Still, she felt, the scheme would have greater results than that, and, turning gravely, she glanced at the men who had gathered upon the s.h.i.+ngle. They looked very little and feeble as they cl.u.s.tered together, in face of that almost overwhelming manifestation of the great primeval forces against which they had pitted themselves in the bottom of the tremendous rift. It seemed curious that they did not shrink from the roar of the river which rang about them in sonorous tones, and then, as she looked across the mad rush of the rapid and the spray-shrouded fall to the stupendous walls of rock that shut them in, the thing they had undertaken seemed almost impossible. Wheeler appeared to guess her thoughts, for he smiled as he pointed to the duck-clad figures.
”Well,” he declared, ”in one way they're an insignificant crowd. Very little to look at; and this canon's big. Still, I guess they're somehow going through with the thing. It seems to me”--and he nodded to her with sudden recognition of her part in the project--”it was a pretty idea of Nasmyth's when he asked you to start them at it.”
Laura remembered that the leader of the men had once said that he belonged to her. She smiled, and raised the hand that held the firing key.
”Boys,” she said, ”it's a big thing you have undertaken--not the getting of the money, but the beating of the river, and the raising of tall oats and orchards where only the sour swamp-gra.s.ses grew.” She turned and for a moment looked into Nasmyth's eyes, as she added simply: ”Good luck to you.”
She dropped her hand upon the little box, and in another moment or two a rent opened in the smooth-worn stretch of rock above the fall. Out of it there shot a blaze of light that seemed to grow in brilliance with incredible swiftness, until it spread itself apart in a dazzling corruscation. Then the roar of the river was drowned in the detonation, and long clouds of smoke whirled up. Through the smoke rose showers of stones and ma.s.ses of leaping rock that smote with a jarring crash upon the walls of the canon. After that came a great splas.h.i.+ng that died away suddenly, and there was only the hoa.r.s.e roar of the river pouring through the newly opened gap. Laura turned and handed the box to Nasmyth.
”Now,” she said, ”I have done my part, and I am only sorry that it is such a trifling one.”
Nasmyth looked at her with a gleam in his eyes.
He answered softly: ”You are behind it all. It is due to you that I am making some attempt to use the little power in my possession, instead of letting it melt away.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DERRICK
A bitter frost had crept down from the snow-clad heights that shut the canon in, and the roar of the river had fallen to a lower tone, when Nasmyth stood one morning s.h.i.+vering close by the door of his rude log shanty at the foot of the gully. The faint grey light was growing slightly clearer, and he could see the cl.u.s.tering spruces, in the hollow, gleam spectrally where their dark ma.s.ses were streaked with delicate silver filigree. Across the river there was a dull glimmer from the wall of rock, which the freezing spray had covered with a gla.s.sy crust. Though it had not been long exposed to the nipping morning air, Nasmyth felt his damp deer-hide jacket slowly stiffening, and the edge of the sleeves, which had been wet through the day before, commenced to rasp his raw and swollen wrists.
He stood still for a minute or two listening to the river and stretching himself wearily, for his back and shoulders ached, and there was a distressful stiffness in most of his joints that had resulted from exposure, in spray-drenched clothing, to the stinging frost. This, however, did not greatly trouble him, since he had long realized that physical discomfort must be disregarded if the work was to be carried on. Men, for the most part, toil strenuously in that wild land. Indeed, it is only by the tensest effort of which flesh and blood are capable that the wilderness is broken to man's domination, for throughout much of it costly mechanical appliances have not as yet displaced well-hardened muscle.
In most cases the Bushman who buys a forest ranch has scarcely any money left when he has made the purchase. He finds the land covered with two-hundred-feet firs, which must be felled, and sawn up, and rolled into piles for burning by his own hand, and only those who have handled trees of that kind can form any clear conception of the labour such work entails. It is a long time before the strip of cleared land will yield a scanty sustenance, and in the meanwhile the Bushman must, every now and then, hire himself out track-grading on the railroads or chopping trails to obtain the money that keeps him in tea and pork and flour. As a rule, he expects nothing else, and there are times when he does not get quite enough work. Men reared in this fas.h.i.+on grow hard and tireless, and Nasmyth had been called upon to lead a band of them.
He had contrived to do it, so far, but it was not astonis.h.i.+ng that the toil had left a mark on him.
He heard the drifting ice-cake crackle, as it leapt the fall, and the sharp crash of it upon the boulders in the rapid. It jarred on the duller roar of the river in intermittent detonations as each heavy ma.s.s swept down. There was, however, no other sound, and seizing a hammer, he struck a suspended iron sheet until a voice fell across the pines from the shadowy gully.
”Guess we'll be down soon as it's light enough,” it said.
Then another voice rose from the shanty.
”The boys won't see to make a start for half an hour,” it said. ”I don't know any reason why you shouldn't shut the door and come right in. Breakfast's ready.”
Nasmyth turned and went into the shanty, conscious that it would cost him an effort to get out of it again. A stove snapped and crackled in the one room, which was cosily warm. Gordon and Waynefleet sat before the two big empty cases that served for table, and Mattawa was ladling pork on to their plates from a blackened frying-pan, Nasmyth sat down and ate hastily, while the light from the lamp hanging beneath the roof-beams fell upon his face, which was gaunt and roughened by the sting of bitter spray and frost. His hands were raw and cracked.